


minifics and drabbles: an ongoing supercorp anthology

by sapphic_luthor



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: F/F, Fluff, Freeform, Gen, Lena Luthor Doesn't Know Kara Danvers is Supergirl, Lena Luthor Knows Kara Danvers Is Supergirl, a bit of established relationship, a bit of not-yet-established, almost entirely fluffy so far, these are all based on ask memes and drabble requests so, they could go in pretty much any direction at all, welcome to the chaos friends
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-22
Updated: 2020-11-21
Packaged: 2021-02-28 19:42:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 25
Words: 13,831
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23262667
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sapphic_luthor/pseuds/sapphic_luthor
Summary: tiny stories and extended narrative headcanons;inspired by prompts, lyrics, and those little needling ideas that you just can't shake.mostly happy, mostly soft, and all set in a universe in which kara and lena are devastatingly in love, whether they know it or not.
Relationships: Kara Danvers/Lena Luthor
Comments: 147
Kudos: 753





	1. who worries the most?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> who worries the most?

Lena believes that she’s the more worried of the two of them, for quite a while, actually.

When Kara gets called away, Lena sits at home and drinks whiskey with more purpose than necessary, refuses to watch the news, because _yes_ she knows that Kara is perfectly capable of taking care of herself (and any assortment of alien criminals) and _yes_ she knows that Kara is “literally invulnerable” (a direct quote) but it never actually gets any easier to watch Supergirl fight.

So in the beginning, if you had asked, Lena would have told you that she was the anxious one. But then one night Kara wakes up crying, frozen in terror in their bed, and for several agonizing minutes, no amount of Lena’s softspoken comforts or gentle touches can break through the haze of nightmare that straightjackets Kara while she shakes. When finally, finally, she turns to Lena and sobs _“I couldn’t save you, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,”_ into her neck, Lena’s blood runs cold. It’s not the first time Kara has had a night terror, but it’s the first time she admits to Lena that they’re always different iterations of the same horror: Lena, hurt, and Kara unable to get to her.

(After that night, they go to Kelly. Kara has a lifetime of nightmares in her bones, but she is too good and too full of sunlight to deserve the pain they cause her– Lena refuses to allow it. They work through them together.)


	2. who kisses the hardest?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> who kisses the hardest?

It should, by all reasonable accounts, be Kara.

They say she’s made of steel, but Lena secretly rejects the nickname on the basis of scientific inaccuracy: she can attest firsthand to the softness of Kara’s touch.

But it’s Lena, ultimately, that kisses the hardest. It’s Lena that pins Kara to walls outside of galas, Lena that launches herself into Kara’s arms the _second_ the door closes behind the last of the Superfriends on game night. And kisses with Kara may have broken noses when she was younger, but Lena does not kiss the way a clumsy teenage boy in the driver’s seat of a car kisses– Lena kisses with pinpoint precision and an intensity that feels like being devoured, and on more than one occasion (almost all of them, if she’s being honest) Kara finds herself whispering several prayers of thanks to Rao that her skin doesn’t bruise, because if it did, she’d be in turtlenecks for weeks just to hide the hickeys.


	3. who wants to stay in bed just a little bit longer?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> who wants to stay in bed just a bit longer?

For all of her youngest-billionaire-and-CEO-of-an-emerging-global-tech-company bluster, Lena is terrible at mornings. It’s one of the best perks of being the highest in the chain of command, she tells Kara once, bleary-eyed in bed and covering her face from the sunlight; if you’re in charge, nobody can ever accuse you of being late.

Kara pulls the sheets back from over her girlfriend’s head and argues, just like she does most other mornings, that it’s _beautiful_ outside, and there are _dogs_ in the park across the street that they could be petting right now, and doesn’t Lena want to go try that new breakfast place they talked about the other night? But it’s barely 8 in the morning, and when Lena rolls back into Kara’s arms and mumbles something about _not interested in putting clothes on_ and kisses her collarbone, Kara realizes that sometimes, amid several very good reasons to get up, there are more important reasons to stay in bed. (They have this argument at least 3 times a week. Kara hasn’t won yet.)


	4. what's their most common fight?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> what's their most common fight?

Lena and Kara don’t fight– not over important things, not over anything heavier than whether or not kale should be considered a real food, or if it’s a kind of betrayal to order potstickers from the takeout place across town, rather than the one next to Kara’s apartment. In retrospect, Lena should have probably noticed that. They made it _years_ without genuinely arguing over anything, and that should have been a red flag in itself.

But Lena and Supergirl– they’ve never made it a week without their interactions devolving into something tense and snappy and thick with tension that feels like anger but burns like something else on their skin.

It’s over Lena, once, when Supergirl flat-out refuses to allow her to world hop into Earth-19. The DEO had run through every possible solution, had already established that Lena’s tech was perfectly suited to their mission, but then there was talk of the risk of interdimensional tearing and a mortality rate among humans may have been mentioned, and Supergirl had halted discussions in their tracks. And then suddenly Alex’s protests and Winn’s statistics are background noise, because Lena is _angry_ and demanding to know _what exactly it is that you don’t think I’m capable of, Supergirl?_ and Supergirl is advancing on her, all strong-energy and intimidation, and an exasperated shout of _It has nothing to do with what you’re capable of, Miss Luthor_ is followed up with a _I’m not going to let you risk your life!_ that leaves them nearly chest-to-chest, eyes blazing, completely unaware of the others in the room.

The time after that, it’s about Supergirl. She’s under the DEO’s sun lamps, nearly healed, legs dangling from the side of the cot when Lena explodes through the door. She stalks toward Supergirl, points an accusatory finger and opens with several different half-accusations that sound like _what the **fuck** were you thinking_ and _solar flaring on purpose is the_ ** _stupidest–_ **and _you could’ve gotten yourself_ ** _killed_ –**and it’s one of their ugliest. Lena yells and demands explanations, asks Supergirl if she’s actively trying to put herself in the most danger possible, and does she even realize the risk she took in facing Lillian alone, by not even reaching out to Lena first? And Supergirl sits and listens, voice low and dangerous when she pushes back, because she isn’t fully recovered yet, and she doesn’t have the luxury of yelling and demanding explanations and pacing the room like Lena clearly does.

It’s all very dramatic, Alex thinks, as she watches through the window of the med bay. Lena growls like she’s angry but her hands shake like she’s terrified. Supergirl’s jaw clenches just so, a defensive tic, but her eyes go soft soft soft when Lena trips up and says _what if I had– if we had lost you?_ And then that’s the thing that stops them both, pulls the breath from Lena’s lungs and sets them _really_ looking at each other. _What if I had lost you,_ Lena whispers, voice cracked with tears, and when Supergirl reaches a hand out in comfort, intertwines their fingers, it’s profoundly intimate in a way that makes Alex step away and leave them in privacy.

It’s not the last time they have that argument, but then Kara is Supergirl and Supergirl is Kara and Lena loves her– both halves of her. It doesn’t get easier, and sometimes Lena’s hands still shake, but now Kara can kiss them still and wrap Lena in yellow-sun hugs that remind her that Lena’s here and Lena’s whole and if they can stay like this, they’re always going to be safe.


	5. who whispers inappropriate things in the other's ear?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> who whispers inappropriate things in the other's ear at inappropriate times?

Kara, for all of her goofiness and nervous smiles, is _unfairly_ smooth via text.

She sends Lena messages during the workday sometimes, little things that really shouldn’t be as hot as they are but leave Lena flushed and a little bit breathy and eternally thankful that she doesn’t share an office, and it’s exactly this that clambers to the front of Lena’s mind when she gets called into the DEO to consult on a mission.

Supergirl stands strong and commanding next to Lena throughout the briefing, hands clasped firmly at her back. Lena watches as she nods where appropriate, hums agreement when necessary, and then the meeting is over. The agents file out in little groups, one holding the door for the next, and when the room is nearly empty, she leans toward Supergirl casually. “Can I be honest?” She asks, and Supergirl quirks an eyebrow toward her. “I wasn’t really paying much attention,” Lena admits, and then she leans toward Supergirl’s ear and explains why– whispers _exactly_ what she was thinking about doing to her, in this room, on this very table. Kara rips the comms piece out of her ear as quickly as super-speed allows, blushing bright red, but Lena, eyes wide with mounting horror, knows that it’s already too late.

(Alex can’t look either of them in the face for almost a month.)


	6. who would sing their child to sleep?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> who would sing their child to sleep?

Of the two of them, Kara’s the one who sings.

She sings children’s tunes to their toddler, she sings karaoke with their friends, she sings off-key and loud and happy on long car rides. Lena doesn’t join in, because _I don’t sing, Kara, some people just aren’t meant to,_ and because she’s more than happy to bask in the glow of Kara’s song instead. So it’s Kara, usually, who hums happy little things to their daughter when she’s tired, running a finger slowly slowly slowly down the soft spot between her brows and down to the tip of her nose, watching tiny eyes close with each pass of Kara’s fingertip.

But once, it’s Lena.

She only knows the one song, really, but it’s slow and soft and exactly what their daughter needs to sink into a quiet kind of peace for the night, and Kara stands silently in the doorway with tears in her eyes as she listens. _It’s beautiful,_ she says, and when Lena turns to face her, Kara’s heart feels fuller than it’s ever been. _It’s an Irish lullaby,_ Lena whispers. _My mother used to sing it to me,_ and then the tears in Kara’s eyes do fall.

Later, when they’re tangled together in the soft of their bed, Lena sings it for her, too.


	7. who comes up with the worst pick-up lines?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> who comes up with the worst pick-up lines?

The first time Kara sends her a pickup line, Lena threatens to block her number, and Kara’s only half-sure that she’s joking. _But it’s funny because you’re a scientist, Lena,_ she argues, _because Barium and Beryllium spell BaBe–_ and Lena knows that, obviously, because she knows the periodic table better than she knows her own face, so she tells Kara as much. Kara tries one that ends with _because you’re out of this world_ but laughs too much to get the delivery right. _It’s because I’m an alien, Lena, don’t you get it–_ and Lena gets it, of course she gets it, but she’ll be damned if she admits that it’s funny, and watching Kara try to fight back laughter is cuter than any pickup line is, anyway.

And this is how they end up sprawled across Lena’s couch, Kara reading pickup lines from a blog post that hasn’t been updated since 2011, and Lena rolling her eyes with more and more fervor after each one, and then it strikes Lena out of the blue. She does her best to maintain a casual facade when she says _I’ve thought of one, actually,_ but the look of unrestrained joy on Kara’s face pulls a smile from Lena, too. _Do you know what solipsism is?_ She asks Kara, and it’s Kara’s turn to roll her eyes this time, because even though she was to be in Krypton’s science guild, she still learned basic philosophy, Lena. _If the theory of solipsism holds true–_ and suddenly she’s so excited to get to the punchline, and maybe she’s been judging Kara too hard, because this **is** fun– _and everything in this reality is created by my mind, then you are the best thing I’ve ever come up with._

Kara’s lips part in something like shock and she is so quiet for so long that Lena wonders if she’s done it wrong– is that not how pickup lines work? Did it not make sense? But then Kara’s kissing her and kissing her and kissing her and between breathy sighs she laughs gently because _I can’t believe that even when you’re going for cheesy, it still ends up being the most beautiful thing anyone has ever said to me._


	8. favorite non-sexual activity?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> favorite non-sexual activity

Kara visits Lena Luthor six times in the ten days since she’s met her. At first it’s professional (sort of) and then it’s strictly out of curiosity (Kara swears) and by the fourth visit, when Lena sheepishly admits that no, she hasn’t eaten lunch yet today _either,_ Kara makes a habit of bouncing into the top suite of the L-Corp building any time she has a break in her work (and several times when she doesn’t.)

It’s weird for Lena, at first, because who is this bright reporter who chooses to spend her lunch breaks in a suffocating corporate office across from a suffocating corporate woman with a last name like Luthor? But she’s relentless, and she’s so _pure,_ and before Lena realizes it, the best part of her week is when Kara’s brightness floods even her darkest corners.

Three months into it, Kara nonchalantly asks _so what do you do for fun?_ and Lena is so lost for an answer that it almost chokes her up, because… she doesn’t know. She has a megacorporation to manage and a violent family legacy to outrun and it’s been many, many, years– since the little lab in the garage with Jack, probably– since she’s done something for fun. She makes the mistake of telling Kara exactly this, and Kara’s heart breaks. _But what do you do when you’re stressed out_ , Kara demands to know, _or when you’re sad, or when you have free time,_ and Lena can tell that her answers ( _work, work, I don’t)_ are all wrong by the way Kara’s eyebrows pull together in genuine concern. And Kara looks so heart-heavy and like she wants to hug Lena, and it makes Lena feel weird, because she wants Kara who smiles and laughs loud and not Kara who looks like she wants to protect Lena from everything bad the world has ever done to her.

It’s this thought, this desperate need for Kara’s smile back, that removes all filters between Lena’s brain and her lips. So Kara asks _when is the last time you felt really happy,_ and Lena, without a moment’s hesitation, blurts _every time you’re here_ and then it sits between them, sparkling and dangerous, until Kara smiles wide wide wide and says _that’s…how I’ve felt too_.


	9. big spoon / little spoon

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> big spoon / little spoon

It’s an accident, she tells herself, because they’d been drinking all night, and the movie was especially boring so of _course_ they were going to accidentally fall asleep. And Kara’s couch isn’t even really big enough for two people to sleep on unless they’re fully and completely tangled up in each other, and so that is how Lena wakes with the length of Kara pressed snugly against her. It’s not spooning, she tells herself, because it wasn’t on purpose, and because Lena’s always the little spoon, always has been in every other relationship she’s ever been in, andthen she catches herself on that thought, and God, what the fuck is she even doing, thinking of this in terms of spooning and relationships and anything other than falling asleep warm and sleepy and drunk with her best friend?

The next time, it … might have been on purpose. But maybe it wasn’t? Because Kara shows up at her door, wide-eyed and fragile and full with apologies but she’s just had a nightmare and can she please come inside and just try not to think about it for a while? And what is Lena going to do but let her? But make her tea, and sit her on the couch, and watch with a heart overflowing as her best friend’s eyes grow heavy and tired? So when Lena puts Kara in her own bed, tells her that it’s too late to go home now, and why doesn’t she just stay until morning because it’s no bother, really, she doesn’t mind the couch at all– when she does this, it can all still be written off as another accident.

But when Kara reaches for Lena’s hand, holds her back and tugs her toward the bed, says something sleepy and nonsensical like _sleep here, it’s fine, Lena_ – this is when it starts to gain purpose. When Lena lays stiff and nervous in her bed, because she doesn’t want to disturb her _best friend_ , it still paints itself in her mind as an accident. And then Kara drags Lena into the center of the bed and presses into her with all the stumbling grace of a sleepy kitten, and she pulls Lena by the wrist and brackets her own body with Lena’s arm, and Lena allows herself to think, for the first time, _oh._

She wakes the next morning to the tickle of blonde hair on her lips and the hot skin of Kara’s stomach beneath her hand, and just when her body is settling soft into the sensation, absorbing the shock of it, the woman in front of her shakes gently with a laugh, whispers, _I always knew you’d be the perfect big spoon._ And Lena has to admit it then, doesn’t she? That it was never an accident, not really; it was never going to be anything but inevitable for them to end up this way.


	10. what is their favorite feature of their partner's?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> What is their favorite feature of their partner's?

Lena’s absentmindedly watching Kara write, scribbly and fast and in a cross between some sort of reporter’s shorthand and half-cursive, when her mouth bypasses her brain entirely. Half of _you have really nice hands_ is already out of her mouth before she realizes what she’s said, and then Kara pauses mid-scribble and looks up at Lena with an amused kind of curiousness on her face. Lena goes red-- fiercely, mortifyingly, red-- and then she takes a breath and takes stock of her options. From a logical perspective, there’s no amount of _sorry I didn’t mean that_ or _not in like a weird way_ or _forget I ever said that_ that can save her from humiliation, so she decides to accept her fate, lean into it, and meet Kara’s eyes full-on. It can’t really get worse than accidentally telling Kara she has nice hands, can it? But it does, because then Kara says _thank you_ and _I was watching you type earlier and you have such gorgeous fingers_ and Lena’s brain short-circuits well before Kara can follow up with _like somebody who should play piano, you know?_ And Lena might mumble something like _thank you_ but she honestly isn’t sure. The rest of the interview is an absolute blur, and she’s confident that Kara had to stretch some of her quotes around to make sure her friend reads like an intelligent multi-faceted business tycoon and not like a woman valiantly fighting off sexual fantasies about her friend and her own quote-unquote _gorgeous fingers._

The DEO is under siege for two days before Alex relents and admits that they _might_ need some outside help and that _maybe_ L-Corp technology is exactly the thing that could stop the onslaught of other-dimensional attacks. So Alex calls (begrudgingly), and Lena comes to help (because of course she does), and before Alex can even settle into properly pouting about needing to ask for help, the two of them have worked out a solution so complex (superstring theory lends itself beautifully to interdimensional travel, Lena says) that Brainy almost _(almost)_ can’t follow it. Lena brings the technology and Alex brings the science and the DEO brings the manpower, and they’re an hour into what’s starting to look like an all-nighter when Supergirl crash-lands on the DEO floor and loudly asks just how far they are from a fix, because the interdimensional fights are more difficult than the normal ones and she’s just come back from a world where everyone was inexplicably into health foods, and can she never go back to that one please?

Alex doesn’t hear her, because she’s acquired the incredibly adept skill of tuning out Kara’s complaints and Kara’s complaints only, and Lena doesn’t hear her because she’s painstakingly stitching together a rupture between universes, and she doesn’t really have the time to listen to Supergirl talk about how much she hates kale (which, really, should have been a glaring clue.) There’s _something_ familiar in the childish way she complains, Lena thinks, but her brain is otherwise occupied and if she’s going to save this world (again) there isn’t time to unpack how strange it is that Supergirl is huffing like a petulant child just because Alex hasn’t answered her. And then Supergirl approaches the war table, realizes who else is standing around it, and snaps back into her most heroic tone to offer a _Hello, Miss Luthor. We really appreciate your help_. And Lena’s thinking that she’ll say something like _of course I’ll help_ or _good to see you too, Supergirl_ , but when she looks up from her screen, she catches Supergirl intently watching her type. _Staring_ _._ Lena’s fingers freeze over the keys, and when Supergirl lifts her own eyes to see what caused Lena to stop, she blushes, and a million pieces fall together at once. Lena’s brain falters and then kickstarts itself back at 100 miles an hour like a self-defibrillation, and the look on her face must instantly give her away, because when her wide wide eyes meets Supergirl’s--Kara’s--? eyes, they both know.


	11. what do they do when they're away from each other?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> What do they do when they're away from each other?

When Supergirl rolls her eyes and walks out of a briefing at the DEO, Alex has had enough.She finds Kara in her apartment later that night, and the first words out of her mouth are _what the fuck is going on with you lately,_ because Kara has been kind of an asshole for an entire week, and if there’s a problem between them, Alex intends to fix it. And Kara swears she doesn’t know, doesn’t think there’s any problem, doesn’t have an explanation for the weird turn of her mood, but when Alex’s television blares “L-Corp CEO Spends Second Week at Metropolis Office” the next morning, things start to make a bit of sense.

She tries carefully when she sees Kara again, says _when is the last time you’ve seen Lena?_ and gets her head absolutely bitten off. It’s _what does Lena have to do with the fact that you’re being so annoying, Alex,_ and _I’m not her babysitter, why would I know,_ and a series of other childish quips that Alex does not have the patience for. Then Lena returns, and Kara goes more or less back to normal, and Alex makes a mental note to explore that concept later.

A month later when Lena goes to Japan, Kara becomes thoroughly insufferable, and Alex has to put her foot down. She bursts into Kara’s apartment where the blonde is drinking Daxamite ale directly from the bottle and says _you have to tell her,_ knowing that Kara will know exactly what she’s talking about. Kara looks toward her sister sharply, and then the anger melts off of her face and she looks like she’s about to break into tears, so Alex starts backpedaling. She says _if she knows you’re Supergirl then you can fly to see her--_ at the exact same time that Kara says _But I don’t know if she feels the same way--_ and then they just stare at each other in shocked silence, because for the first time in a long time, they weren’t on the same page after all. And all Alex can think to say is _Oh_ , and Kara sighs _Yeah_ and then Alex pours herself a whiskey, joins Kara on her couch, and they sit in silence for a while. When she speaks again, Kara says _I didn’t realize why I was so upset until you called me out last month,_ and Alex aches at that, because she’s painfully aware of what it feels like to get battered over the head with feelings that you didn’t even know you were ignoring. _You have to tell her_ , she says again, and Kara might be drunk, but the tight nod she gives in response is a promise.

It’s a 16-hour flight home, and she hasn’t slept in at least twice that long, so when Lena steps off of the elevator on her apartment’s floor, the last thing she wants to see is somebody standing outside of her door. But then the person turns around, and it’s Kara, looking beautiful and terrified, and she stutters and reaches for her glasses and says _I have to tell you something._


	12. what do their friends/family think of their relationship?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> What do their family/friends think of their relationship?

_This doesn’t make any sense._ Alex says for the third time in a row, and Kara just sighs, because she can’t explain it any better than she already has. Alex has cycled from shock to anger to disbelief over the course of an hour, and Kara’s terrified that if they don’t reach the acceptance stage soon they’ll never get there at all. Her sister has so far tried _You’re not even gay, Kara_ (Kryptonians don’t really consider gender like that) and _Lena isn’t a lesbian_ (evidence proves otherwise) and _How is it possible that I didn’t see this coming?_ (We were pretty surprised by that as well, to be frank) until finally, finally, the redhead takes a deep sigh, grasps Kara’s hand in her own, and says _Are you sure?_ And Kara’s smile widens of its own accord, because this is the first question that she has a crystal-clear answer for: _I’ve never been more sure of anything._

Alex turns it all over in head for several more hours, goes home and says something about _sleeping on it_ , and then shows back up to Kara’s apartment at 7:00 in the morning with two coffees and a half dozen pastries. Kara reaches for them, completely transfixed, but Alex holds them back for a second to meet Kara’s eyes, and suddenly the moment is much more serious than apple turnovers and donuts covered in powdered sugar. There’s not even a whisper of hesitation in Alex’s tone when she speaks– _If you love her, Kara, then so do I–_ and that’s all there is to it.

-

(She tells Nia next, and it’s less than an hour before the young reporter makes them a joint Instagram account and starts creating portmanteaus of their names. Kara thinks it’s funny; Lena threatens to buy the entire company just to have it removed.)


	13. who tells their friends/family first?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Who tells their family/friends about their relationship first?

The only one to take it in casual stride– bizarrely, hilariously, gloriously– is Eliza. She laughs once into the phone, loud and bright, and says _I’m so happy for you, Kara,_ and then _Can I talk to her?_ and Kara’s stomach flips several times in nervousness, but she holds the phone out to Lena. Lena, who has gone from absently biting her nails with worry to wide-eyed and shaking her head _no, no, no, no_ in as long as it takes Kara to mouth _she wants to talk to you._ There’s a few seconds of silent argument that ends with Lena relenting, and when she takes the phone and says _Hello?_ she sounds so small and scared that Kara almost regrets pressuring her into it. But then Lena listens for a second, looks at Kara, mouths _no listening,_ and turns away to continue the call on the far side of the apartment. And Kara tries not to listen, she **really** tries, but there are times that her powers just… get a bit away from her, and she may or may not have picked up bits and pieces of the conversation that sound like Lena saying _I know, I know. We’ll be home for Christmas, I promise,_ and _I don’t know how to explain it, really, it just fell into place and we realized it had always been there,_ and Kara’s heart goes soft.

It’s almost thirty minutes before they’re done speaking, but the last thing Kara (accidentally) hears is Eliza saying _I’m so proud of you honey,_ and when Lena returns the phone to Kara, her eyes are glistening with tears. Kara knows better than to ask, knows better than to push it, so she sends a silent _thank you_ prayer into the universe for Eliza instead. Because Kara knows that she can love Lena to the ends of this lifetime and into the next, but what Lena really needs is family, the proper, love-you-through-it-all kind, and if she can’t find that with the Luthors, Eliza will make damn sure she finds it with the Danvers’.

-

(Lena never tells Lillian. She finds out when she receives the invitation, a thick card emblazoned with the House of El symbol interlocked with an L. There’s something so derisively mocking about it, to send a wedding invitation to a prisoner who can’t attend a wedding, that Lillian actually feels a twinge of pride when she opens it. The message on the back, inked in Lena’s looped script, says only one word: _Surprise._ )


	14. who says i love you first?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Who says I love you first?

It slips out of Lena completely unbidden on the back half of their fourth round of Taboo. The word she’s trying to get Kara to say is “mitten” and when the first clue Lena offers is “the stray from the warehouse district” she thinks it’s a longshot at best. Because 6 months ago Kara had absolutely insisted that they try a sushi place in North National City that _Yelp recommended, I swear,_ and it had ended with several wrong turns, a since-closed restaurant, and a mangy white-pawed kitten following them for 4 blocks that Kara had promptly named Mittens and only barely been talked out of petting. So Lena says _the North side,_ and then _no sushi_ and Kara, bless her, doesn’t even look confused for a second. She tries _warehouse,_ and then _cat?_ with a question to it, and Lena smiles and say _s close!_ and when Kara triumphantly yells _MITTENS,_ Lena laughs and says _yes!_ and then _God, I love you_ and the entire room shudders to a halt. She freezes the second she realizes what she’s said, but Kara looks like she’s just had the air taken straight from her lungs.

Nobody speaks for a very long few seconds. It’s not quiet, not really, because Nia’s bluetooth speaker is quietly playing some recycled pop song that nobody is really listening to, and somehow that’s worse. The “Mitten” card in Lena’s hand shakes ever-so-slightly while her heart does somersaults. Friends say I love you all the time; she’d heard Kara say it to Nia just yesterday, and it’s fine, it should be completely fine and there’s absolutely no reason that any of this should be weird, right? Except it absolutely is weird, and now there’s this massive weight hanging by a taboo-card thread between Lena, who is considering her exits, and Kara, who is so pink-cheeked that she’s starting to look more and more like she wants to launch herself straight through her apartment’s ceiling.

They all, to their credit, try very hard not to be weird about it. Alex recovers first, makes a half-hearted complaint about how using personal experiences is probably cheating, and one by one, the rest of the room blinks back to reality and offers weak agreements and insincere attempts to change the subject. Nia asks if anyone needs another drink, then ignores everyone’s answers and refills all of the glasses to the brim anyway, shaking her head to herself and muttering something that sounds like _I swear to God, these two_. Brainy only manages to look slightly perplexed, and then he says _it appears that the temperament of this hangout has changed abruptly, although I am not entirely sure how,_ and Alex looks like she’s going to have a stroke.

They make it through one more round, in which Kara and Lena are both suspiciously silent, before Alex mercy-kills the night and says _Well, I know Kara has an early morning_ (she doesn’t) and _So_ w _e should all get out of her hair_ (they should) and then one by one, the guests leave. Lena, normally one to stay late and help clean up, throws a _goodbye_ to Kara like it’s a live grenade and then bolts out the door.

Then Alex is the only one left, and it’s quiet, finally, and she leans back against the kitchen counter, crosses her arms, and with some amusement asks, _So are you going to explain what that was?_ But Kara doesn’t know what Alex is talking about, and what does she mean _what that was_ , and no she isn’t blushing, she’s just warm, okay. And part of Alex wants to laugh at the absurdity of it all, but she recognizes that this isn’t something she can force out of her sister even if she tries. So she drops it for a while and helps Kara clean, but when she leaves the apartment she tosses _I would really appreciate it if you just fucked already, because the tension is starting to make it deeply uncomfortable for the rest of us_ over her shoulder, and the strength of Kara’s blush makes the risk of poking a Kryptonian bear so, so, worth it.

And this is what leaves Kara standing alone in the middle of her apartment, phone in hand and nerves haywire as she considers her options. Because what if it’s just in her head, and what if Lena had just meant the platonic kind of love, or what if Lena just really enjoyed winning at Taboo and this was part of her competitive streak? But then she sends a brief **Do you have a sec for me to stop by?** text to Lena, who replies seconds later with **I’ve been sitting in the car outside your building for 20 minutes trying to work up the nerve to come back up and say it properly,** and even superspeed can’t get her out the door fast enough when she reads that, because it’s all the answer that Kara needs.


	15. who initiates the kisses?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Who initiates the kisses?
> 
> (heads up that this one's rated more m)

Their unplanned falling-together was only supposed to happen once, honestly. It had started with an opulent party to celebrate CatCo’s 5 year anniversary and somehow ended with them upstairs in the now-empty office space, Lena pressed to the glass of her office with her dress hiked up around her waist and Kara’s mouth between her legs, and _it was just this once_ , they swore, after Lena comes down the second time, because _we just got caught up in the party,_ and _it was just– one of those things, you know–_ and _no reason to bring it up again,_ and _we can pretend this never happened, no problem, of course._

And that lasts about ten hours, because Lena wakes up the next morning and finds hickeys on the insides of her thighs while she’s showering, and the memory of Kara’s lips and Kara’s tongue and Kara’s fingers takes the breath straight from her lungs. She considers using the moment to get herself off but then she blinks and suddenly she’s at Kara’s apartment door with her hair still wet and her tank top sticking to her skin, and Kara pins her against it like the words they agreed upon last night were never spoken at all. They don’t make it to a bed that time, either. It starts against the inside of Kara’s door, stumbles through the kitchen a bit where Kara’s fingertips inadvertently leave imprints in her countertop when she clutches at it, and ends half-on half-off the couch with Kara breathing hard and Lena disappearing out the door before her hair even has a chance to dry. And it’s not until she gets home and steps back into her shower, purposely not looking at the new bruises that are sure to arise tomorrow on her thighs, that she realizes they… haven’t kissed. It had been whirlwind and hot and frantic and there were tiny bite marks on her collarbone and Lena had sucked rough kisses into _several_ parts of Kara’s skin over the past 12 hours, but they had yet to kiss. Lena cycles through the memories, finds only ones of her biting her lip in an attempt to keep quiet or with her face buried into Kara’s neck, and Kara’s mouth was usually… elsewhere. So she showers and thinks about if that maybe means something, if it’s better or worse to fuck your best friend than to kiss her, if maybe she should be actively _trying_ to not kiss her the next time– and then there it is. There shouldn’t be a next time, they had decided that there wouldn’t be a next time–

(The next time is two days later.)

They do a very good job of pretending everything is fine, and Kara shows up for lunch like things are normal and they chat and it’s normal and it’s fine and it’s not weird and _this_ is what they were both hoping for that first night when they had agreed _never again._ So Lena begins to believe that the second time was just a fluke, or maybe the first time was just especially long and that time in Kara’s apartment was still part of it, it was just a… part two, to the first time? Or a follow-up that doesn’t really count? But these mental gymnastics are exhausting and Lena’s already spent most of the day trying not to think about not-kissing Kara and she’s a little bit distracted, maybe, and she’s accidentally staring while Kara talks with her hands, and then one thing leads very quickly to another and all of the sudden Lena’s skirt is bunched up again and Kara’s on her knees dragging her underwear to the side and minutes later when she pulls hard at Kara’s hair, too sensitive to keep going, Lena says _How does this keep happening_ at the same time that Kara says _God I love doing that_ and then that poses a problem. Lena’s cheeks are lighting up hot because she loves when Kara does it, too, but there’s probably some unpacking to do of why she loves it so quite so much, and then Kara says _You’re right,_ and _um_ and _I should probably get going!_ and she leaves too-fast and with a friendly wave like the taste of Lena isn’t still shining on her lips as she goes.

They don’t talk for three days, and then Supergirl lands on Lena’s balcony and strides right into her apartment like she owns the place, and Lena spends all of three seconds deciding whether or not it’s a good idea to do this again. (It’s not, but she’s going to do it anyway.) But then the hero approaches her slow and gentle and it’s Kara in moments like this, not really Supergirl at all, and it feels different. So Kara says something to the effect of _I know we’re not supposed to do this anymore_ and Lena, heart banging against her chest, nods her head and tries to agree in a way that sounds believable. But Kara’s still advancing on her, looking like she’s got no intentions of “not doing this anymore,” and then her hand cups Lena’s face carefully and she says _but I don’t want to end this without knowing what it’s like to kiss you_ and Lena says _then don’t_ and when they kiss it’s like finally filling in the center pieces of a puzzle they’d been haphazardly building from the outside in, and the whole picture of it is suddenly so, so, clear to Lena. Kara pulls away, and it looks like she’s going to leave and they might honestly never talk about this ever again, and Lena’s heart is doing flip after flip after flip so she blurts _Wait,_ and _is there really a reason why we shouldn’t be doing this?_ And Lena meant it rhetorically, mostly, but Kara pauses long enough that it looks like she’s genuinely running through every possible reason in her mind and alights on nothing of consequence. She looks surprised, a bit, but above all else she looks _excited,_ and her awestruck whisper of _None that I can think of_ ends up half-swallowed in their next kiss. Lena smiles and Kara’s suit starts dematerializing, and they _do_ make it to a bed, that time, and (most of) the ones after.


	16. who reaches for the other's hand?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Who reaches for the other's hand first?

Lena values touch, even if she doesn’t know it. Kara picks up on it instantly, sees the way Lena’s hands sometimes gravitate toward her own when they’re talking through difficult things together, or how Lena’s body angles toward hers like she’s ready for a hug, but she always, always, always catches herself at the last moment. And maybe it’s because Kara can move at superspeed and sometimes she takes in other people’s movements like they’re a bit in slow motion, or maybe it’s because Kara’s spent so much time with Lena in the time since they’ve met that she’s become very specifically attuned to the way Lena moves, but either way– it’s heartbreaking.

Lena’s all business, she’s professional and quiet and sometimes even cold, but for Kara– she’s different. There are cracks across Lena’s facade, like when light shines through a broken thing and you can see just where it’s been shattered, and Kara catches at those lines with her fingertips and pulls the pieces apart and demands to be let in, and Lena barely puts up a fight before she lets her. And they spend lunches together, they go to bakeries on weekends, Lena even comes to a game night, once, and gets a little bit drunk, and Kara’s heart grows and grows and grows every time she sees the brunette because in exchange for the dismantling of Lena’s painful suit of armor, they’re building something beautiful together but still— they still don’t touch, not **really**. Not past quick _hello_ hugs that don’t feel like they mean much else, not past a gentle hand on Lena’s shoulder or a goofy high-five when they beat Alex’s trivia team the fourth time in a row.

And that’s why it makes all the difference when they finally do. When Lena agrees to come over for a movie night, when they sit comfortably near each other but not _that_ near on the couch, when Kara sees Lena wringing her hands out of the corner of her eye, looking like she’s trying to physically restrain herself from reaching out. When she asks _what’s wrong_ and Lena assures her that _it’s nothing, it’s nothing, I just– I heard from Lillian today and it’s put me in a weird mood,_ and then a sniffle escapes her so Kara just… reaches out. She told herself that she was going to let Lena do it, that Lena needed to be the one to finally decide that she wanted this sort of comfort, but watching the brunette actively fight against her own instincts to her own detriment is too much for Kara so she reaches out and intertwines their fingers and squeezes firmly and the last bit of glass around Lena’s heart completely shatters. She squeezes back, lets out a quiet little whimper, and then turns to bury her face fully into Kara’s shoulder and sobs. So it may have been Kara, that first time, the one to bridge the gap and pull Lena’s hand into her own, but after that, it’s Lena. She can tangle their fingers together when she’s happy or run her thumb over the backs of Kara’s knuckles when she’s nervous and she _does,_ because finally finally finally Lena knows that it’s okay and it’s safe, and that Kara’s touch is somewhere she can find home.


	17. tattoo

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> prompt: SC + Lena getting a tattoo
> 
> set sometime after that incredibly important moment for lena in 5x18.

"I still think this is a bad idea.”

“Of course you do,” Lena responds patiently. She holds her breath as the artist’s marker presses into the skin of her ribcage.

“I’m just… I’m not sure about it,” Kara says, biting at her thumbnail.

“Well, good thing you don’t have to be,” Lena replies smoothly. “Since it’s going on my skin, and not yours.”

Lena’s artist smirks to herself as she touches the finishing marks to the brunette’s skin. The woman pulls the dark pen from Lena’s skin and leans back. “Okay, this is the outline. Check that out and make sure you like the way it looks.”

Lena stands from the padded chair and faces the tall mirror mounted on the wall, hitching her shirt up near-indecently to get a better look at the set of four geometric symbols set small and centered below her breast. Kara stands behind her in the mirror, still biting nervously at her lip. Their gazes lock, and Kara’s anxieties pour out a second time.

“Lena, are you _sure?_ ”

Lena turns to face the blonde, serious and soft in tone. “Hey, I know you know what this means to me. I’ve never been more sure.” The tension loosens in Kara’s body, just a bit. “And let’s not forget the added bonus that it’s a great little _fuck you_ to my brother,” Lena adds, laughing.

Kara doesn’t even crack a smile, concern still evident on her face. “And you definitely don’t want me to–”

“Kara, you redrew it a dozen times. I _promise_ that this is exactly what I want.”

“Okay! Okay. I just want to be sure if my handwriting is on somebody’s skin forever that it’s my _best_ handwriting, that’s all.”

“Ah, I was wondering if it was just symbols, or if it meant something.” The tattoo artist cuts in. “What language is it?”

Both women pause.

“It’s, uh…” Kara stumbles.

“It’s an alien language,” Lena answers. She smirks and nods her head toward Kara as she continues. “She’s a professor at NCU, specializing in off-world linguistics.”

Kara’s eyes go wide in panic, and she shoots Lena a _what the hell!?_ look, mouthing ‘ _You know how bad I am at improvising’_ from behind the artists’ back. It only makes the sparkle of laughter behind Lena’s eyes go brighter, and she has to bite her lip to keep from snickering.

“Oh, cool.” The artist replies, and thankfully she leaves it at that. Lena settles back into the chair and Kara gravitates to her side, a picture of nervousness as the artist finishes her preparations and turns on the tattoo gun. 

“Okay, here we go,” the woman says, and then the first bite of the needle touches to pale skin directly below Lena’s heart. Lena flinches ever so slightly, and Kara inhales a bit, soft and sharp. Lena reaches for Kara’s hand, squeezing it once, a promise that she’s okay.

“No pressure to tell me or anything, but… can I ask what it means?” The artist pitches the question casually as she works over the first letter, a tiny, diamond-shaped thing.

Lena feels a gentle press from Kara in their connected hands. She looks up and all but forgets the artist, then: when Lena answers, she speaks to soft blue eyes and an understanding so much deeper than mid-city tattoo shops and broken family legacies. The word falls from her lips like a long-awaited unshackling.

“ _Free_.”


	18. an accidental reveal

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> from [lifeofanerdygirl](www.lifeofanerdygirl.tumblr.com) on tumblr, who asked for drunk supercorp and accidental reveal of powers

“In college? _Please_ ,” Lena scoffs as she downs the rest of her glass. “We definitely never would have been friends.”

Kara gasps in mock-hurt from across the room. “Okay, rude.” She pulls a water bottle from the fridge, holding it in the air toward Lena as an offering.

Lena nods her thanks. “Kara, be realistic. I was the spoiled little rich girl— the spoiled little rich _Luthor—_ and half of the board of directors was in my mother’s pocket. I was a pariah. But you were probably off joining clubs or playing sports or—“ Lena gestures widely with her hands as she speaks, and the back of her hand makes contact with the near-empty wine bottle with a loud _smack_.

Kara, unthinking, crosses the length of the room and catches it before it falls.

Lena blinks. Her eyes travel from the righted bottle on the table up to Kara, who is now suddenly standing _very_ close.

“Did you just—“

“Wouldn’t have wanted to spill red on the carpet, right?” Kara blurts, forcing laughter. “That probably would have been a nightmare to try to clean up!” She takes a step backward, weighing her options. Was Lena drunk enough to think it was a trick of the eye? Could she just force normalcy and hope they never talk about it?

“Yeah…” Lena agrees slowly. Her eyes narrow. “It would have been _super_ difficult, huh?”

Kara gulps. “I can explain.“

“Oh my God,” Lena lets herself fall back against the couch, mouth wide in disbelief. “You _are_ her.”

“Listen, I was trying to figure out how to tell you—“

Lena’s props her elbows on her knees and drops her head into her hands. “Oh my God. I’ve had way too much wine for this.”

Kara hurries around the coffee table, dropping quickly onto the couch next to her friend. “I know this is a lot, and I promise I will answer any and all of your questions, but please, please, know that I have wanted to tell you for _so_ long.”

Lena says nothing for a long moment, and then suddenly her head snaps up.

“Oh my God,” she whispers. “All the times you let me talk about how much of a crush I had on Supergirl…”

Kara flushes. “That… okay, that was, admittedly—“

“Oh my God,” Lena continues, horror dawning on her face. “You watched Sam and I play ‘fuck marry kill’ and argue over the merits of sex with Supergirl for an _hour.”_ Karagoes bright red. Lena groans, covering her face again in embarrassment. “I am so, so, sorry.”

“For objectifying me?” Kara asks, and the playfulness in her tone makes Lena turn to face her. The blonde smirks. “Or for never working up the nerve to ask me out and test your theories?”


	19. kale

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> prompt: Kara is 100% certain Lena hates kale and only eats it as a way to punish herself for being a Luthor.

“You know you don’t have to do this, right?” Kara says, and there’s a playfulness to it that Lena doesn’t understand.

“Do… what? She asks, perplexed.

“The–” Kara says, and then she stops herself, but her tone indicates that she’s about to launch into something important. “I know that you have a lot of weirdness around– I mean, oh, God, this is more awkward than I meant for it to be– I know that your name–” There’s a long pause as Kara tries to right her thoughts. “I just… I know that you sometimes feel like you have to prove your worth, what with the Luthor name and all. I just want you to know that you don’t.”

Lena pauses, forkful of kale half way to her mouth. “I… okay?” The confusion in her tone is evident.

“I just mean…” Kara starts. “You don’t have to like… punish yourself.”

Lena’s eyebrows furrow. “O-kay…” she says, dragging the syllables out and trying to understand. There’s a beat of silence, a moment in which they can’t meet each others’ eyes, and then Kara speaks:

“Sorry, I just– the kale.”

Lena stays quiet.

“Lena,” Kara continues. “Kale is… terrible.”

Lena’s face scrunches quickly in argument. “It’s not _terri-”_

“Lena, kale is terrible. Like, objectively bad. And there is no reasonable explanation for you eating it aside from some kind of twisted self-punishment, so I need you to understand that no matter your bloodline, or your name or your–”

“ _Kara,”_ Lena interrupts harshly. “Have you ever considered that I _like_ kale?”

Kara’s lips move to form words, and then fall still. A moment of silence falls between them, and then Kara whispers:

“Oh God. You’re past the point of saving.”


	20. things you said when you thought i was asleep

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> things you said when you thought i was asleep

Lena wakes to the sound of heated whispers.

She can’t make out what they’re saying at first, just hears the hard edges of consonants and the lingering hiss of Kara’s _s_ sounds. But then Alex gets angrier, and Kara’s tone turns sharp, and if Lena puts all of her energy into listening, she can just make out words that trickle goosebumps across her skin like an unwanted touch.

_“She isn’t your friend. I shouldn’t even have to say that, after what she did,” Alex snaps._

_“That’s wasn’t **her** , Alex!”_

Kara’s rebuttals sound weak, even to Lena’s own ears.

_“Then who the fuck was it, Kara? Who else fired cannons at you? Who else stole from you, locked you in a kryptonite prison, activated myriad? Who?”_

There’s silence as Kara’s hope falters, and Lena can’t blame her. She’s spent the better part of the last year making those same arguments against herself, losing her own personal war of self-deprecation.

_“It isn’t–” Kara starts, but then she sighs. “You don’t understand.”_

_“No, I sure as hell don’t.”_

There’s another pause, and then their voices get quieter, like they’ve just remembered that Kara lives in a studio apartment without separating walls, and they’re arguing in a doorway no less than 20 feet from where Lena pretends to be asleep on the couch.

_“I know she was your friend,” Alex starts, quieter now. “She was mine too.”_

_“Is. Is my friend. She still is,” Kara says back, insistent._

Lena squeezes her eyes shut hard– she won’t cry.

Her heart aches in her chest all the same.

_“Kara,” Alex begins, but whatever she wants to follow up with gets swallowed by the darkness of the apartment and the depth of a long day and a longer conversation._

_“Her brother is dead,” Kara says gently, like that’s an explanation in itself. “After the day she’s had… letting her fall asleep on my couch is the least I can do.”_

Her voice is so earnest and pure and so _Kara,_ and hot tears push behind Lena’s eyes.

_“Something’s changed,” Alex whispers to her sister, allowing her voice to go uncharacteristically soft. “For you, I mean. There’s something different for you now, isn’t there? About her.”_

Lena swears her heart stops. Her fingertips curl into the throw pillow beneath her head like it’s the only thing keeping her alive, and she holds her breath as she waits for Kara’s answer.

_“Yeah,” Kara breathes. “I don’t know if… I think maybe it’s always been there.”_

Lena is struck with a wave of something indescribably overwhelming– the dress she’d unceremoniously passed out in is suddenly far too tight, the throw blanket thrown haphazardly over her shoulders is suddenly far too hot, and her heart is beating at twice the speed it’s meant to. The adrenaline of fight-or-flight runs through her veins, but she stays frozen instead. Lena thinks that Alex says her goodbyes with something that sounds like _be careful, please_ , but she can’t be sure, because the room is spinning and Kara feels it too, _Kara feels it too,_ and her brother is dead and she’s fallen asleep on Supergirl’s couch– on Kara’scouch– and are they even friends right now, she wonders? Have they ever really been just friends, or have they always been maybe something–?

“I know you’re awake,” Kara says abruptly.

There’s a long silence after that in which the blonde just leans against her front door, unspeaking, waiting for an answer. Lena weighs the pros and cons of responding and risking outing herself as awake– as eavesdropping. She’s leaning toward no, convincing herself that she can just wait for Kara to go to bed before she slips out, but the entire argument collapses when Kara says, “I can hear your heartbeat.” And then, “Sorry. I just… I can tell you’re awake.”

There’s something touching in that– that Kara knows Lena’s heartbeat so intimately that she can recognize when the brunette is sleeping and when she’s awake, but Lena ignores it and pushes herself into a sitting position instead. Her hand runs down her face slowly, exhausted,

“You don’t have to explain yourself,” she says quietly, and as she speaks she begins to straighten her dress around her knees. She needs to get home.

She’s reaching around near her feet, feeling about for her discarded shoes in the dim light of Kara’s apartment, when the blonde whispers the words that stop Lena cold.

“Was I wrong?” A pause. If there’s any question as to what Kara’s asking, she erases the uncertainty when she breathes again. “Lena. Tell me it’s not just me. Please tell me that you feel it too.”

Lena’s breath catches. She throws all sense of reason from her mind and turns to meet Kara’s eyes, whispering:

“I always have.”


	21. things you said after it was over

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> things you said after it was over

The moment Lillian’s eyes go dark, Kara knows it’s over. Leviathan falls to pieces almost instantaneously, and within the hour, the ancient world-bending beings are but dust in several atmospheres.

-

It should feel righteous, Kara thinks, she should be excited. She should feel _better_ than she does, standing in the center of Lena’s apartment, shoulder to shoulder with her sister as they watch live footage of Lex being apprehended. She should be like J’onn, standing off to the side with pride in his posture. Or like Alex, satisfaction rippling off of her in waves, spiking her adrenaline and making her jumpy. Like Nia, maybe, exhausted with divine relief, smiling wide at a job well done.

Kara feels none of this: she cannot stop looking at Lena.

Lena, who is standing behind her couch, watching, not for the first time in her life, her brother’s public downfall. She can barely see the television through the tangle of near-strangers in her home, but she doesn’t seem to care. She just stands straight and clutches at the cushion along the back of the couch, white-knuckling it every time the news reporter says _Luthor_.

They report Lillian’s death next, and Kara hears Lena’s breathing stutter in her throat. It’s that sound, the broken little whimper that nobody save a Kryptonian with super-hearing would have noticed, that makes Kara stay. They filter out one by one, J’onn leaving to find M’gann, Alex leaving to find Kelly, Nia leaving _to_ _go sleep for 40 hours straight, I swear to God--_ until Kara is the only one left.

Lena holds the door open in the wake of Nia’s departure. “Thank you,” she says to Kara earnestly. “For everything.”

“Of course,” Kara replies, but when she doesn’t move to leave, Lena looks confused.

“Lena, I...” She begins.

Lena closes the door slowly, and leans back against it, refusing to meet Kara’s eyes. “You don’t have to say anything.”

Kara doesn’t know how to reply to that. She stands uselessly as Lena moves past her toward her kitchen to fill her kettle and stand wordlessly at her countertop as it heats. 

For a moment, there’s nothing but the sound of the water simmering.

“She’s not dead, you know,” Lena says flatly. “She’s too arrogant to die.”

Kara takes tentative steps toward the brunette. “That doesn’t mean you can’t feel...” She pauses, unsure of what the right word is.

“Terrified?” Lena quips drily, but halfway through what was meant to be a sarcastic laugh, the fight dissipates from her entirely. Her breath catches in her throat and she sags forward into the counter, her voice betraying her and breaking with the threat of tears. “She’s going to come back for me, Kara. She’s never going to stop.”

Kara reaches her just as the first tear breaks the plane of Lena’s face, and her arms are wrapped around the smaller woman before she can think better of it. Lena flinches slightly, curling her shoulders inward like maybe she can shrink into herself, but then she leans her weight full against Kara and allows herself to cry silently into the blonde’s chest.

“Hey,” Kara murmurs. She wraps a protective arm around Lena’s shoulders and presses her cheek to dark hair, hugging her closer. “Lillian can’t get to you. You’re safe, Lena.”

It takes a bit before Lena can speak clearly again.

“What if I never escape it,” she whispers, voice small. “The poison in my blood.”

Kara’s heart breaks, and the flare of something small and angry slips down her spine. Her words come out hushed, but firm. “You are more than a name.”

“The things I’ve done--” Lena begins to press an argument into the soft folds of Kara’s shirt.

 _“You are more than your name,”_ Kara repeats, fierce, the strength in her voice catching them both by surprise. “You are so full of light, Lena. I don’t even-- I can’t tell you how heartbreaking it is that you can’t see it.” Lena pulls in a shaky breath, and Kara knows she’s listening. She continues, focusing on the thrum of heart. “You’re stronger than them. You have always been stronger than them.”

Lena lets out an actual sob at that, slipping her arms around Kara and reveling in the comfort of a protection that she’s needed desperately since the day she pulled the trigger.

-

Later, in the early hours of the morning, when Lena has cried her soul bare and Kara has held her through it, they talk.

Kara drags the first truths from her heart, shaky and nervous and still tender from the wounds that Lena inflicted. It bruises them both, but there’s something in the night, in the way Lena looks at her, in knowing that they will heal, and Kara finally feels it. She touches the soft of Lena’s wrist, feels the strong heartbeat beneath her fingertips, and finally, truly, allows herself to exhale. 

Lena pulls at the seams of an ache she’s been long reluctant to reopen, and shares the darkest parts of a year of loneliness and pain and abuse. Lena thinks of another couch, in another lifetime, of Kara promising not to leave, and it’s almost laughable. This Kara -- the one who shakes with barely-repressed rage when Lena tells her how Lex treated her, who intertwines their fingers and says things like _I don’t even have the language to describe how incredible you are --_ Lena knows that this is the Kara that will stay.


	22. even if i'd never seen your face

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> from a lyric prompt:
> 
> _i'm trying hard to say that even if i'd never seen your face, i'd be waiting for you. (in and out of love, oh wonder)_

“Do you believe in soulmates?” It comes out of Kara abruptly, 25 minutes into their third episode of The Bachelor.

Lena snorts into her wine glass. “Like do I think each and every one of those girls is that boring guy’s soulmate? Uh, no,” she laughs.

“No, like-- in general. Do you think there’s something in the universe that just... pushes two people toward each other?” Kara says, and the tone in her voice makes Lena turn to look at her. 

Kara’s facing the television, but she’s glassy-eyed like she hasn’t been watching for quite some time, opting instead to sip at her glass of alien wine and pretend to be casual.

“I don’t know,” Lena says truthfully, but the admission comes out quieter than she thought it would. She turns back toward the TV, because it will be easier to have this conversation if she doesn't have to look Kara in the face. “I guess then I’d have to believe in some kind of higher power that knows where we’re supposed to end up, and science doesn’t lend a lot of argument toward that.”

Kara hums a bit, not expressing agreement or argument, just acknowledging Lena’s response. “I feel like...” she starts, but then she clamps her mouth shut. “Yeah. I don’t know either.”

The nervousness in Kara’s voice makes Lena lose interest in anything else going on. She turns to look at her friend, but Kara isn’t looking back at her-- just biting her lip like she’s deep in thought. Lena reaches for the remote and mutes the TV. “Hey,” she says gently. She tucks her feet beneath her on the couch, rotating herself to face the blonde, and it puts them _close_. She brushes Kara’s knee with her fingertips to get her attention. “You feel like what?”

Kara glances toward her, and a soft blush hits her high in the cheeks. “Sometimes I just...” Kara starts slowly. “I think about you, and all the things in my life that led me to you, and to us. I don’t know.”

Lena’s stomach flips. _Oh._ “What do you mean?”

Kara, now pink to the tips of her ears, continues. “Like I just... I didn’t _need_ to be with Clark that day that we interviewed you. I wasn’t even press. And I think about that all the time, because what if we had never met?” Lena’s heart goes soft as she watches Kara struggle to piece her words together comfortably. “And then... I don’t think I would have even thought to go into journalism if I hadn’t met you that day. When you told me you thought I could be a reporter.”

“And you think that...” Lena starts tentatively, not really sure how much of what Kara’s just said links back to the soulmates comment. She’s got a flutter in her heart at the prospect of it, but she doesn’t want to repeat anything out loud that might scare Kara off when she’s only just barely getting her to talk about it at all.

“I’m not saying it means that we’re, you know-- I mean, I don’t know-- I just...” Kara stumbles again, like there are specific words that she’s taking great care not to say out loud. “I’ve been thinking about how the course of my life changed the moment I met you.”

“Mine did too,” Lena replies quietly, and she lifts her eyes from the rim of her glass to meet the blonde’s. The way Kara is looking at her feels like something heavier and gentler than they’ve had between them before, and it sends nervous little ripples through her chest.

“I don’t want this to sound too weird,” Kara begins, sounding like she's moments from talking herself out of continuing. She turns her body to match Lena’s, letting their knees brush, and then rests her head softly against the back of the couch as she speaks. “But I’m so much better for it. Meeting you, I mean. Things just kind of... fell into place for me, after that. Like...” she trails off, but it’s clear that there’s something else she’s weighing whether or not to say.

“Like what?” Lena whispers, careful to honor the fragility of the moment.

“Like I’d been waiting to meet you before I even knew you.”

Lena’s heart cracks open. She takes a shuddery breath and finds that she’s suppressing tears from the intensity of Kara’s words, from the reality of what Kara has just handed to her. Because this is the moment they’ve been dancing around for years, suddenly closer than it’s ever been before and staring them both straight in the face, and Lena thinks that there’s never been a more perfect moment to fall into it.

“I think we were,” she says, and the words fall in a breath like butterfly wings, delicate and nervous as they leave Lena’s lips. She reaches a hand out, resting her fingers lightly against Kara’s jaw, tracing the curve of her chin with the pad of her thumb.

Kara’s breath catches at the touch, and her eyebrows draw together as she tries to follow. “We were what?”

Lena’s eyes go gentle, but her voice is sure. She holds her breath; jumps.

“We were always meant to find each other.”

The words have barely left her mouth before Kara kisses her. 

It’s imperfect, maybe, that Lena has a wine glass in one hand and Kara’s jaw cupped in the other when their lips meet. Or that Kara misjudges the distance just a bit, and that she knocks her nose into Lena’s just before the moment they fit together. But it’s perfect all the same, because time slows and the world stops spinning for just a moment, and when the universe sighs around them, something that feels like _finally_ , Kara feels it in Lena’s easy movements against her mouth, in the tension falling away from her heart. The universe says _this is where you’re meant to be,_ and Kara feels it down to her very bones.


	23. no one ever got my soul right like she could

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> let me tell you no one ever got my soul right like she could. (dancing under red skies, dermot kennedy)

_**let me tell you, no one ever got my soul right like she could.** (dancing under red skies, dermot kennedy)_

“Can I ask you something?” Kara says, and the tone of her voice is so earnest that Alex almost forgets that they’re both drunk.

“Sure.”

Kara leans sideways toward the table, reaching so far that she nearly slips off the couch as she grabs for her wine glass. She speaks slowly, like the words are stretching around her mouth before she can get them out. “Can you tell me about when you knew?”

“Ah yes, _knowing_ ,” Alex responds gravely, not missing a beat. “The year was 1990. I was but an infant, barely capable of higher brain function, the first time I experienced _knowledge_ \--”

Kara’s hand closes clumsily around the stem of her glass, nearly knocking it over as she snorts. “Okay, shut up, smartass,” she laughs, but then she grows more serious. “I meant, about Kelly. Or even Maggie, I guess. How did you know? How you felt about them?”

“Oh. I mean, I don’t know,” Alex responds bluntly, sounding borderline drunk-defensive at the prospect of having to talk about her emotions. “It’s… you know. How do you know when you like anyone? You just know.” She squints a bit at the complete non-answer she’s given through the haze of alcohol, and tries a different approach to her response. “How did you know when you liked James? Or Mon-El?”

Kara bites at her lip, staring down into her glass and refusing to meet Alex’s eyes. “I didn’t,” she says quietly.

Alex snaps to attention, quirking an eyebrow. “What? What does that mean?”

“I _meeean_ ,” Kara drawls, letting her head loll to the side as she sighs heavily. “I… in the beginning, I thought that I might like them. And both times, I was convinced of that possibility enough to go with it until it became easy to believe.” She keeps her eyes trained downward, hoping the alcohol will temper the reality of what she’s saying. “But I don’t think I ever... _really_ knew. Not for sure.”

“Oh,” Alex replies softly, and there’s enough pity in her voice to bring tears to Kara’s eyes. Alex ducks her head to meet her sister’s gaze, and there’s a moment’s silence when Kara refuses to look up. “Kara,” she tries gently. “That’s okay, you know. It doesn’t always have to feel like a love story to be real.”

“What if it does?” Kara answers quietly, eyes shining. “Feel like a love story, I mean. What if I feel that? What if maybe I’ve been feeling it for a while? Could I have really-- is it possible to not _notice_?”

Alex’s eyebrows knit together in confusion as she struggles to follow her sister’s drunk logic. “You mean you-- you think you do? Feel that? There’s somebody right now?”

“I don’t think James or Mon-El ever knew me,” Kara says, lost in her own thoughts and ignoring her sister’s question. “That’s why I wasn’t sure. Neither of them really knew me.”

“Kara, I’m confused,” Alex chuckles gently, poking at her sister from across the couch. “What are we talking about here?”

“I’ve been realizing lately that there are only two people who have ever really gotten me,” Kara says seriously, staring hard at a seam of the couch cushion. “You,” she begins, tilting her head toward Alex but keeping her eyes down. She chews on her lip like she’s just bared the first half of a confession, and then pauses for so long that Alex momentarily wonders if her sister is alright. “...and Lena.”

“Okay,” Alex says slowly, waiting for the bomb to drop. But then Kara’s eyes lift to meet hers, and the look in them is so terrified and nervous and desperate to be understood; it clicks. “Oh,” Alex breathes. “ _Oh_.”

“It’s something different, Alex,” the blonde whispers, and the weight of her words is so sincere that Alex swears the night pauses around them. Kara’s thoughts start to tumble out too-quickly, like she’s been holding them just behind her teeth for so long that she can’t breath until she’s said them all. “I don’t even have a way to explain it, but it’s--- it’s different. Deeper, or something, I don’t know,” she shakes her head lightly, trying to straighten the overlapping lines of thought in her head. “But I think it’s always been this way.” 

Alex’s face softens, her heart aching at the deeply vulnerable thing Kara has chosen to share. She smiles gently, biting at the inside of her cheek to fight her own emotion pricking at the backs of her eyes. Her voice cracks on the first word as she asks, “You’re sure?”

They both know the answer already, but conviction swells in Kara’s tone all the same, and when she answers, she says it like it’s sacred:

“She’s the only thing I’ve ever been sure of.”


	24. you won't kiss her

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I won’t kiss you. It might get to be a habit and I can’t get rid of habits.
> 
> \- F. Scott Fitzgerald

She sits across from you, bright and easy in her movements on a chair that you know isn’t comfortable, and you’re struck. She half-laughs half-smiles, the kind where her tongue presses against the backs of her teeth and peeks through unbidden, like she’s considered trying to restrain her happiness but given up halfway through. You think of sunlight pressing rays against the backs of clouds and warm spring days pressing against the backs of winter winds and then she says your name, she says _Lena_ in the middle of her laughter, and you almost break your only rule.

You won’t kiss her.

_Just this one time_ , you tell yourself, because that is what you always tell yourself. It’s a tired argument, one you’ve been losing to your better sense for years, but now you’ve wanted to kiss Kara three times in two days and she’s just _laughed_ your name from her lips, and for the first time in a long time, you consider allowing yourself to lose.

Your eyes drop to her mouth. She goes quiet. You could look at her now, could lift the angle of your gaze by a few degrees and meet her eyes and confess with your own, and God it would be so, so, easy after that. You’d fall in kisses and in bed just as easily as you’d fallen into café seats across from her all those years ago.

But you won’t kiss her.

It might get to be a habit, and you can’t get rid of habits.

(And where is the line, you think, between habit and addiction? Habit, routine, ritual, addiction: it does not matter. You are a Luthor, and if you allow Kara to be any of these things for you, she will become a target. You will be opening the softest part of yourself to the biting cold of vulnerability, and exposing the city’s hero to danger is something you refuse to do, bulletproof or not.

_Is that really what it is?_ you wonder sometimes, quiet in the middle of the night, like your own thoughts are a secret to be kept from yourself. Are you afraid of her weaknesses, or are you afraid of handing her your own?)

Instead, you glance back down at your lap and not up at her eyes, you respond to whatever it is that’s just made her laugh, and the air clears like it had never been fraught with anything at all.

It’s not the first time you’ve had to throw ropes around the neck of your instinct and drag it home to reason, its heels dug in deep and leaving tracks in the mud the whole way. Your psyche is littered with these trails, of moments where you thought _I have to_ and _I can’t_ and _Run, then_ in tandem. Somewhere along the way they’ve started passing over one another, crosshatches creating a larger picture that you refuse to step back and look at for fear that it will tell you what you already know to be true: there is something here, and it is bigger than you both.

Later, when she’s gone and you’re leaned forward and lazily dangling your wrists over the edge of your balcony, you feel afraid, because it’s getting harder to fight. You’ve spent years weaving stone labyrinths of reasoning, and today Kara had barely so much as laughed and the sun of her had nearly collapsed every one of them down to its base. Your excuses to yourself are starting to look flimsier, your arguments starting to devolve into near-stalemates. But does this mean you’re getting weaker, you wonder, or stronger? Where does one side of the war end and the other start, if the battlefield is just one connecting circle rotating around your heart?

She will find you like this, contemplative and rolling the edges of a deeply personal paradox around your mind. She will float just in front of your balcony, wiggle her eyebrows jokingly at your seriousness, and then sink down to rest her chin upon the backs of her stacked flattened hands on the ledge just next to you. She says something light and casual, like _I’m here to listen, if you want to tell me what’s going on in that big genius brain of yours,_ and you falter.

You won’t kiss her. It might get to be a habit--

You turn your head, cut your eyes over to hers, and she’s otherworldly. The breeze of the night pushes a few stray hairs across her face, and her eyes are big and soft and exactly the same color blue as the city behind her. You bite your lip, lost in a concentration of _what if, what if, what if_ s, and then her own lips part and her eyes drop heavy to your mouth, and you break:

you’re going to kiss her.

You do not know this yet, but when your lips meet hers, the shaky cog within you will grind to a halt for a moment. When she kisses you back, it will catch its teeth on its neighbor, and restart itself with a smooth vigor anew, the genesis of a domino effect that will bring life to parts of you that you had forgotten went dark.

It will be just as easy as you knew it would be. You will fall into kisses and into beds with her, into holidays spent in Midvale and family trees that do not fill their roots with poison; and then-- and then Kara will see the picture you’ve been working so hard not to look at, and when she tips your chin so that you can both admire it together, you will know: you are in love.

  
  



	25. i moved to california, but it's just a state of mind

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> based loosely on the lyric prompt _"so I moved to California, but it’s just a state of mind, it turns out everywhere you go, you take yourself, that’s not a lie; wish that you would hold me or just say that you were mine- it’s killing me slowly”_ from Fuck it I love you by Lana Del Rey

“It’s not about National City, it’s about _Supergirl_ ,” Lena says, but it’s the fourth, fifth, sixth, time they’ve had this conversation, and she can hear the way she’s starting to sound like she’s pleading. “You know what it means for me, for my family---”

“Superman is literally in this city,” Jack says, but he sounds weary too, because they both know how this conversation ends. “The Supers are on your doorstep already, and you think you have to go to California because--?”

“Superman’s history with Lex is too complicated. You know it’s not the same,” Lena says softly. “This is a way to start over, for both of our families. A way for me to...” she trails off, trying to find the words. There’s a long pause, and then: “I have to be better,” she finally finishes, and the shine of tears drip into her whisper. “I have to be better than them.”

Jack fights the urge to drop his head into his hands, and sighs instead, because he knows there’s nothing left he can say. When he hugs her goodbye at the airport, he pulls her in tight with one arm, and whispers truths into her hair: _You’ve always been the best of us. I know you’ll see it someday, too._

But then it’s been two months, and Lena still feels the same. She’s picked LuthorCorp apart at the seams, dragged it’s ugliest parts out into the light and cut their threads one by one, but the shadow of its evils still hangs heavy over these people, and she can feel the way the city recoils.

The decision to rebrand strikes her fast and brilliant, and the clarity of it is cathartic. She cannot control her history or her past, but she can control this: she will cut the image of venom from this organization the way she’s never been able to cut it from her own identity. She tries not to think it-- she knows better --but sometimes in the quiet of her hotel room, she allows herself to hope that maybe between L-Corp and National City, it will finally, finally, feel like absolution.

But then her press coordinator tells her that The Daily Planet is coming to interview her, and the hopes she’d never meant to build collapse in on themselves. She’s familiar with Clark, knows his work, and suddenly she feels so, so, foolish for believing that fleeing a few thousand miles and designing a new logo could ever disentangle her from the carnage that Lex left behind. She knows that Clark will pull mercilessly at her family tree and dangle the roots like a flag of betrayal if she allows him, so she opts for a lip redder than she’s used to and lines her defenses with steel before she stalks into the office.

A nervous looking blonde woman trails him when he follows her in, and she’s soft and beautiful and her eyes are so _blue_ that it catches Lena entirely off guard. The blonde introduces herself as Kara, and before Lena knows it she’s putting cracks in her own walls: talking about her adoption, her childhood-- she’s saying things like _I’m here for a fresh start,_ _please, let me have one,_ because there is something in the way this woman looks at her that feels so much like faith.

-

It happens before she realizes, but there are articles and meetings and lunches and game nights, and then there is something new in Lena. The shimmers around the edges of her heart begin to reflect Kara; Lena can see her in quick moments of self-belief that flicker across her soul like sunspots through glass. It terrifies her, because Lena has only ever known to equate hope with ruin and Luthors with bloodshed, but when the blonde sits bright and easy on her couch and reaches out to offer conviction held in a steady hand, Lena’s heart accepts before her brain has time to protest.

This is how Jack finds her, when he comes to visit a year later. He lets himself into Lena’s office and stumbles upon her talking quickly with a pretty CatCo reporter, and when Lena’s voice goes gentle as she says _This is Kara,_ he immediately knows. Lena smiles more authentically than he’s ever known her to now, and the way her eyes light up as she talks about L-Corp’s new lifesaving technologies makes his heart swell with pride.

_We’re doing good such good work here, she and I,_ Lena says, breathless with excitement and smiling toward Kara. Jack just beams back, and when he looks closely, he sees the way hope has curled itself around Lena’s bones and twined through her like ivy. He sees Kara smile too, and when she speaks it’s meant to be to Jack, really, but she turns to look at Lena instead and says _She’s brilliant, isn’t she?_ and all of Lena’s flowers bloom.


End file.
